Hold Tight and Almost Believe
by starfishstar
Summary: Hope Lupin adjusts to her family's new reality.


**Notes:** Yup, yup, it's my first little nod towards starting to acknowledge the existence and somewhat-canonicity of the Pottermore bio…

This one is for stereolightning, who in recent conversations got me thinking about Hope. And about hope with a small "h" as well.

. . . . .

Hope didn't speak to Lyall for a full week after the attack on Remus.

Oh, they exchanged words when it concerned Remus' health or safety. And just about everything now concerned Remus' health and safety.

But beyond that, she felt herself quietly shutting him out. She had no energy left for Lyall, when every fibre of her being was focused on her child. She kept running her hands over Remus' sleeping form, his tiny body dwarfed in the white swathes of the hospital bed, compulsively reaching out as if she imagined she had to check that all his limbs were really still in place beneath the bandages.

As if she imagined she could somehow protect her baby, who lay twitching and wincing in the supposedly dreamless sleep the wizarding Healers had forced on him.

As a grey dawn broke that first morning, she heard Lyall come and stand in the doorway behind them. The Healers were finally done berating him, then.

When they'd first arrived here, the Healers had rushed Remus away, then sequestered her and Lyall in some other room, a bleak, white place of unadorned walls, and lectured them relentlessly on the care and feeding of their brand new werewolf, on all the things they were to do and not to do – so many things they were not to do – until Hope had banged her fists on the table and shouted that she was not listening to another word unless they let her see her child_ right now_. After an urgent, inaudible conferral, the Healers had agreed, and Hope had followed one of them out of the room, leaving Lyall to their lectures.

She found they'd given Remus a private room, which was either a nice perk out of sympathy for the poor child, or a sign that no one dared to be in the same room with him. Hope suspected the latter.

By the time she'd got here to him, Remus had been asleep, thick white bandages swallowing up the parts of him that had been bleeding and torn open when they'd come running at the sound of his screams and found him on his bedroom floor in the jaws of… Hope had shuddered, pushed the memory firmly away, and hurried to Remus' hospital bed to sit with him through the rest of the night.

Now, as a pale dawn began to seep in through the window, Lyall came up behind her, his footsteps hesitant, to where she perched at the edge of the bed, holding Remus' hand. She felt his hands hover over her hair, touch once, lightly, then glance away again.

He swallowed audibly. "I'll be going for a bit now," he said, every syllable full of penitent apology.

They knew each other so well, she and Lyall, sometimes they didn't even have to speak. Hope knew if he was leaving now, it was to begin converting the cellar. The Healers had been very forceful on that point, with the strong implication that these were not just suggestions, that if they wished to retain custody of their son, they would do everything they were told. And that started with creating a room in which Remus could transform safely.

_Safely_. As if there were anything safe about locking up her four-year-old child in the basement alone.

"I'll be back in the afternoon," Lyall said.

Hope nodded, and didn't turn to look at him. She knew it wasn't fair. She knew it wasn't even really his fault. When you made a careless remark in front of someone who turned out to be a psychopath, and that psychopath attacked your child in retaliation, that didn't make it your _fault_.

Still, she couldn't bring herself to speak and absolve him.

_I stepped into your world_, she thought. _I did it joyfully. I don't mind that you're a wizard, and that Remus is clearly growing up to be a wizard, and that you two share something I will never be a part of. I don't mind that, I just want you in my life._

_But this?_

Lyall's hand hovered, then retreated. "I'll be back this afternoon," he repeated, sounding helpless.

Hope nodded again and heard his footsteps recede.

Not ten minutes later, Remus awoke with a start, his eyes flying open as he gasped, "Mummy, a wolf–!" and Hope's heart broke all over again.

She gathered him up in her arms, held him as tightly as she dared, painfully aware of all the places he was bruised and bandaged. "Shh, sweetheart, I'm here."

She and Lyall had called Remus "pup" sometimes, and "cub," cosy animal names. She couldn't bring herself to do it anymore.

"Shh, love, shh. I'm here."

She couldn't even tell him everything would be all right. Hope had never believed in lying to children.

When his small frame finally relaxed against her own, she released him from her arms and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. His eyes darted around the room and Hope answered the unspoken question. "St Mungo's, love. The wizarding hospital."

His lower lip quivered. "There was a wolf."

"Yes, love."

"He _bit_ me, Mummy."

"I know, love. I'm so sorry. It must have been awful. But Daddy drove him away before he could hurt you even more."

Remus nodded, accepting this logic.

What to tell him? She was determined that she would not lie. But how to explain to a child that from now on he would transform into the same kind of beast as the monster who had done this to him?

At least there would be time to explain it to him gently, a bit later, after the first shock of the trauma was past. They had 28 days still. Hope shivered.

"Does it hurt anywhere, sweetie? Are there places that hurt?"

Remus shook his head against the pillow. Well, the wizard Healers had managed that, at least.

Remus was quiet for a bit, still taking in his surroundings, then he turned to Hope and said, "Mummy, will you tell me a story?" It was a tradition of theirs, extra stories from Mummy when he was sick. His eyes lit up. "Ooh, tell the one about the Boggart, and how it was only a mushroom really! Tell that one, Mummy, please."

The Boggart that was only a mushroom in the end, vanquished with the wave of a wand. This new evil in their lives would not be conquered so easily.

But, voice quivering only slightly, Hope told her son his favourite story, of how his parents had met in the fairy-tale forests of Wales.

The Healers insisted on keeping Remus there for a week, for "observation." What was there to observe? He was a sweet little boy with wounds and gashes that were rapidly knitting back together. There was nothing to see on the outside.

But Lyall went along with whatever the Healers said. He'd gone helpless and pliant in a way Hope had never seen in him be, barely recognisable as her Boggart-conquering hero. And as the Muggle half of this parentage, apparently she was supposed to just go along with whatever she was told.

Hope slept on a cot in Remus' room, and was there when he woke every night like clockwork from nightmares about the wolf. She took the week off work to be there with him, but Lyall still had to go in to the Ministry every day. It was still a normal workweek and life went on around them, as surreal as that seemed. Hope didn't envy him having to walk through those doors each day, knowing that that was the place where he'd drawn the ire of the man who would devastate their child's life.

For seven days, Remus was endlessly poked and prodded by Healers, who would then drift back out of the room, muttering amongst themselves. The Healers were fairly good about maintaining a professional neutrality, or pretending to do so, but Hope saw the way the orderlies, or whatever their wizarding equivalent was called, scurried past the room, each inventing excuses as to why they shouldn't have to be the one to bring Remus his meals or take his temperature.

_That's my child in there_, Hope thought, whenever she came back from the loo or the canteen and saw them at it, dodging and passing off their responsibilities. _He's four years old and he's not going to bite you, you witless idiots._

One evening when both she and Lyall were in with Remus, Hope heard two of them chatting just outside the door, as if their son's illness must make her and Lyall deaf, as well.

"Those poor parents," said one with a cluck of his tongue, the gossipy tone belying the sympathetic words.

"I know!" said the other. "They'd be better off just sending the beast back to the monster that made it, don't you think?"

Hope was almost at the door when Lyall's hand on her shoulder stopped her. She glanced back at him, and just looking into his eyes was enough to remind her that Mummy getting into a brawl with some ignorant, thoughtless hospital employees was not going to do Remus any good.

She sagged back away from the door, and Lyall removed his hand.

From behind them in his hospital bed, Remus piped up, "Mummy, am I a wolf now?"

Hope whirled around. He couldn't have heard those men talking, could he? She had only heard them because she was standing by the door. But however he had picked it up, Remus was asking now. He had always been perhaps too perceptive for his own good.

They both went to him, pulled the room's two stiff-backed chairs close to the bed and took his hands. Hope looked at Lyall, and he nodded. She would begin.

"Sweetie, you're not a wolf, not at all. You're a little boy, and a sweet and wonderful one. But you do have an illness now, called lycanthropy. It means that once a month, only at the full moon, you will become a werewolf – that's something like a wolf, a person who becomes a wolf – but just for one night. I can't pretend it will be easy, sweetheart, but you'll be safe. Mummy and Daddy will keep you safe."

Remus nodded, his eyes darting back and forth between his parents, his quick mind taking everything in. "Once a month, I'll be a wolf?"

"A werewolf, sweetie, yes. Just for that one night."

"Like the bad wolf that bit me?"

"Oh, Remus, no. Not like him. He was a bad man who wanted to hurt an innocent little boy. You are nothing like him."

Remus' eyes started to fill with tears. "But what if I bite you, Mummy? What if I bite Daddy? I don't want to hurt you!" His voice ended on a wail.

"Oh, Remus. Oh, my baby." Hope reached over and pulled Remus close, into her lap.

Lyall wrapped his arms around Remus too, and spoke for the first time, his voice hard and sure. "That won't happen, Remus. That won't ever, ever happen, because we're here to make sure it doesn't. You don't ever need to worry about that."

But Hope looked in her son's eyes and could see he didn't believe that. Remus was going to worry for the rest of his life about accidentally hurting someone, and there was nothing they could do but hold him tight and wish it could be different.

At the end of the seventh night at St Mungo's, Hope put her foot down and declared she was taking her son home, whether they liked it or not.

They took the Floo network home from the hospital, all three of them, Hope not laughing and teasing Lyall about the absurdity of wizarding transport as she usually did. In fact, they still weren't really exchanging words beyond what was necessary for Remus' sake.

They settled Remus in on the sofa, and there he sat for the rest of the afternoon, docile and good-natured, absorbed in his picture books. Not yet five years old, and already Remus was starting to sound out words to himself. He showed clear signs of magic, too. Just a couple weeks ago, Hope had come out to the garden to find that Remus had somehow got his hands on Lyall's wand, and had used it to dig a cosy little burrow for one of the gnomes that were forever infesting their garden.

When Hope asked him how he'd done it, Remus had shrugged and said, "He looked like he wanted a house, so I thought about our house, and said some words like what Daddy always says." He shrugged again. "And now he has a house."

Did all wizarding children invent their own spells? Hope strongly doubted it. To think her heart could ache this much to know that now he would never attend Hogwarts, when half a dozen years ago she hadn't even known such a place existed.

Looking at Remus where he sat tucked up in a corner of the sofa, seemingly healthy but pale, with his shoulders hunched up around himself, feeling his parents' silence even if he didn't understand it, Hope thought, _It can't go on like this_. She and Lyall needed to remain a united front, for Remus' sake.

That night, once they'd tucked Remus into bed and were lying together in their own bed for the first time since that horrible night, Hope crawled into Lyall's arms and let him hold her. They lay like that, a long time, until Hope realised Lyall was weeping, utterly silent, his tears wetting the top of her head, and she felt a sudden surge of protectiveness towards this good man who wanted nothing more than to care for and protect his family, and knew he had failed.

So she shuffled them around until she was holding him instead, and let him cry within the circle of her arms.

"We'll manage this," she told him fiercely. Hope had never thought of herself as a fierce or forceful person, but apparently she was, now. "This is what it is, and we'll manage, somehow. Don't you give up on me, Lyall Lupin."

Lyall shook his head, Summoned a handkerchief and blew his nose.

"No," he said. "We're not giving up. We'll beat this somehow." He turned to her, and in the dim light Hope could see how determined his expression was. "There's got to be a cure. We'll talk to everyone we can. We'll find a way."

From the conviction with which he said it, Hope could almost believe it.


End file.
